Germany: History to the Early Middle AgesGermany to 1871

History to the Early Middle AgesGermany to 1871

At the end of the 2d cent. b.c., the German tribes began to expand at the expense of the Celts, but they were confined by Roman conquests (1st cent. b.c.–1st cent. a.d.) to the region E of the Rhine and N of the Danube. The Romans penetrated briefly (12 b.c.–a.d. 9) as far east as the Elbe River (see Teutoburg Forest), and from the late 1st cent. a.d. to the 3d cent. they held the Agri Decumates, protected against Germanic inroads by a fortified line from Cologne to Regensburg. In a series of great migrations (4th–5th cent.) the German tribes (who did not all come from present-day Germany) overran most of the Roman Empire, while Slavic tribes occupied Germany E of the Elbe.

By the 6th cent., the Anglo-Saxons had established themselves in Britain, and the Franks had taken over nearly all of present-day France, W and S Germany, and Thuringia. Clovis I, who first united the Franks late in the 5th cent., accepted Christianity, and St. Boniface in the 8th cent. spread the gospel in the areas acquired by Clovis's successors. In 751, Pepin the Short deposed the dynasty of the Merovingians and established his own, that of the Carolingians. His son Charlemagne conquered the Saxons and extended the Frankish domain in Germany to the Elbe. He was crowned emperor at Rome in 800.

In the first division (843) of Charlemagne's empire (see Verdun, Treaty of) the kingdom of the Eastern Franks, under Louis the German, emerged as the nucleus of the German state. The Treaty of Mersen (870) enlarged it by the addition of part of Lotharingia (Lorraine), but after the death (876) of Louis it was divided among his sons Carloman, Louis the Younger, and Charles III (Charles the Fat). Emperor Arnulf reunited the kingdom, but during his reign (887–99) and that of his son Louis the Child (900–911), last of the Carolingian kings of Germany, the Norsemen, Slavs, and Magyars began to make devastating inroads. These contributed to economic breakdown and localization, manifest in the manorial system.

Political localization was evident in the emergence of powerful duchies and in the growth of feudalism. The dukes of Franconia, Swabia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Upper and Lower Lorraine emerged as the most powerful magnates of Germany. On the death (911) of Louis the Child, they elected the Franconian duke Conrad I as king. Conrad's reign was spent in struggles against the Magyars and against the rebellious dukes, one of whom (Henry the Fowler of Saxony) succeeded him in 918 as Henry I, beginning a century of Saxon rule. Henry restored some of the royal authority, took territory from the Slavs, and secured the election in 936 of his son, Otto I, as his successor.

Sections in this article:

Introduction
Reunification of Germany
West Germany
East Germany
Postwar Germany
The Third Reich
The Weimar Republic
The German Empire and the Weimar Republic
The German Confederation and the Rise of Prussia
The Holy Roman Empire
History to the Early Middle AgesGermany to 1871
History
Government
Economy
Land and People
Bibliography

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